Department of Sociology & Anthropology
SOCI 3220B
Critical Drug Studies
Guidelines for Final Essay
Winter 2024
The final essay assignment for this class is a research paper (10-12 double-spaced pages, excluding title page and bibliography) on a topic of your choosing within the area of drug studies. The final essay is worth 40% of the overall grade for the course and we expect a well-researched and written paper. You have free range to explore any topic that you wish. The study of psychoactive drugs encompasses a vast academic terrain so there is a surplus of possible topics for you to choose from. Try to choose something that you are genuinely interested in exploring. There are two preconditions for the essay: 1) the essay cannot be merely descriptive, and 2) you must use academic sources to back up your main points and arguments. What I mean by this is that you must do something in the essay, such as perform an analysis of a specific topic in the anthropology of religion, or develop an argument or an application of a theory using ideas from the course. In other words, there must be some analytic component in the paper and not just mere description of “facts”. We do not want to see the simple regurgitation of material. We want to see you using theories or concepts learned in the course and applying and mobilizing them to your chosen areas of investigation. Additionally you must use at least 10 academic sources to back up your claims, or to develop your ideas, arguments, etc. Since you have limited space and time try to narrow down the scope of your essay and focus on concrete issues in detail instead of talking about generalities.
Essays should be submitted through the drop box that will be set up on Brightspace. Late essays will be penalized at a rate of 3% per day. It is also expected that your assignments will be readable at an advanced undergraduate level. You will be penalized 1% for each spelling and grammar mistake (up to a maximum of 10%).
Style Criteria
The essay must be typed with at least one-inch margins on all sides. The lines of the main text should be double-spaced, but lines in block quotations (which should also be indented), footnotes, and bibliographies should all be single-spaced. Pages must be numbered consecutively, exclusive of the title page.
Include the following information on the title page of the essay: the title of your essay, your full name and student number, the date you submitted the essay, the course number, and your professor’s name as well as your TA’s name.
Basic Structure of the Essay
This essay should be composed of six basic components: an introduction, a thesis statement, a body of arguments substantiated by textual evidence from at least 10 academic sources, a conclusion, textual references, and a bibliography:
Introduction: In the introduction you should present and clearly explain the problem that you intend to address.
Thesis Statement: Within the introduction, you should also offer an explicit, clear, and unambiguously articulated thesis statement concerning the problem you are investigating. This thesis statement should offer a strong expression of the fundamental theoretical position that you seek to support and defend across the essay. In other words, the thesis statement should offer a clear articulation of how you will analyze your problem, the questions you intend to address, or how you will explore the topic.
Outline/Arguments in Body of Essay: Beyond the introduction, your essay should be built as a series of arguments in which you demonstrate the validity of your thesis statement. These arguments in the body of the essay should be built from close and direct consideration of the academic literature concerning your topic. Throughout the body of the essay, you should strive to outline the main theory, concept or idea, and to show that your thesis is appropriate and accurate.
Conclusion: You should write a conclusion to the essay in which you reflect on the significance of your thesis and the analysis you undertook to support it. In this conclusion you should contemplate the impact of your topic and perhaps suggest some future avenues of research.
Textual References and Bibliography: The minimum number of sources you must use for this paper is 10. All references, whether they are direct quotations, paraphrased representations of a text, observations or claims about a text, should be documented with appropriate textual references. Your essay should include a bibliography at the end, listing all academic books and the journal articles discussed or used during the research process. Bibliographical entries must be written in one of the accepted style guidelines, such as Chicago Style, MLA, APA or some other commonly accepted form of referencing. Please note that your textual references must be academic in nature. If you are using Internet sources make sure that they are authorities in the field and not just Wikipedia type information sources.
Criteria for Evaluation
This essay assignment will be assessed on the basis of the following criteria: 1) the relevance of the topic you have chosen to examine; 2) the clarity with which you introduce the problem and state the central thesis that you take with respect to your topic; 3) your ability to develop an effective and appropriate methodology to the essay problem; 4) how well you outline the theory, concept or idea; 5) how well you support your thesis through argument and analysis of relevant textual evidence from academic books and journal articles; 6) the quality of your own analysis and critical interpretation of the ideas, information, and arguments expressed in the materials you study for the purposes of this essay; 7) the depth of understanding and insight that you bring to the problem around which your essay revolves; and 8) the quality and style of your writing.
Students in this course are responsible for ensuring that the essays they submit for evaluation and grading are free of significant or recurring grammatical errors. We will take off 1% of the overall grade for every spelling/grammatical mistake up to a maximum of 10%. Any student who submits a written assignment that is made very difficult to read, or comprehend because of grammatical or stylistic errors or problems will earn a failing grade on the essay. To avoid this range of penalties altogether, all students in the course are highly encouraged to review their essays with members of the Writing Tutorial Service (229 Paterson Hall; 520-6632; www.carleton.ca/wts ).
PLAGIARISM:
Plagiarism is the passing off of someone else’s work as your own and is a serious academic offence. For the details of what constitutes plagiarism, the potential penalties and the procedures refer to the section on Instructional Offences in the Undergraduate Calendar.
What are the Penalties for Plagiarism?
A student found to have plagiarized an assignment may be subject to one of several penalties including: expulsion; suspension from all studies at Carleton; suspension from full-time studies; and/or a reprimand; a refusal of permission to continue or to register in a specific degree program; academic probation; award of an FNS, Fail, or an ABS.
